6 dead, 30 injured in Siberian plane crash

MOSCOW, Russia – At least six people were killed in a plane crash in western Siberia, a Russian Emergency Situations Ministry official said on Monday.

Thirty people were rescued, including the injured, and one person is still missing, said Yevgeny Pinchukov, a spokesman for the Tomsk branch of the ministry.

He said the plane was carrying 33 passengers and four crew members, while a spokesman for the federal aviation authority said 32 passengers were aboard.

“At 8:48 a.m. local time the pilot reported that the left engine of the plane caught fire and that an emergency landing was needed,” said Sergei Izvolsky, a spokesman for the Russian federal aviation authority Rosaviatsia.

“At 8:55 a.m. he decided to land on the surface of the Ob River, which caused its partial destruction,” Izvolsky said.

Investigators and forensic experts are working on the site of the crash, the committee said.

Russian state TV reported earlier Monday that the Antonov-24 had made a hard landing on the surface of the Ob River less than a mile from the village of Medvedevo in the west Siberian region of Tomsk.

President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the grounding of all Soviet-made Antonov-24 planes in Russia at an emergency meeting Monday.

He imposed a similar ban on the use of Tupolev-134 passenger jets following a June 20 crash of a Tu-134 plane near Petrozavodsk in which 47 people were killed or died later in hospitals. The ban remains in place.